Royal Opera House » Coronation2015-07-31T13:08:37ZWordPressLottie Butlerhttp://www.roh.org.uk/?p=216082013-06-20T17:49:19Z2013-06-20T17:17:28Z

Richard Jones’s new production of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana opens tonight (20 June), marking the first time the opera has been staged at Covent Garden for 60 years.

The opera, which was commissioned in honour of the Queen’s coronation in 1953, follows the turbulent relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex.

Toby Spence, who sings the role of Essex, describes how he has grappled to convey a character who is at once ‘sensitive, emotional and frustrated’."

He is someone who is adorable but impossible, loveable and un-loveable all at the same time.

The opera, which is based on Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex, explores the tensions between the public and private life of the Queen. Find out more in our Opera Essentials series.

Susan Bullock sings the role of Queen Elizabeth I, whom she describes as a lion-hearted heroine.

To have this dilemma played out on stage, of the choice between public duty and her love and depth of feeling for Essex, shows a different side to what the history books delved into. We see quite a complex character on stage."

Opera began as a court entertainment. Wealthy nobility in the 17th and 18th centuries had their own theatres, composers, musicians and theatrical troupes to entertain them and their guests. So it’s not surprising that there was a good degree of flattery on stage to reflect the status of the aristocrats who paid for it all. Baroque and Classical operas are full of scenarios in which rulers are challenged, angered and betrayed. But whatever happens in the course of the story, the monarch (mythological or historical) invariably ends the work through dispensing a bit of noble forgiveness.

This type of opera was part an education in how to exercise power and part a distancing technique (‘any resemblance between those on stage and those in the audience is entirely coincidental’). It’s a pattern to be seen in such a work as Handel’s Tamerlano, and with Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus) the title gives it away! Even presenting Queen Elizabeth I in an opera written for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II – as Gloriana does – has loud echoes of this.

We can easily forget today how powerful and suggestive stage works could be. Gloriana’s Act III is about the rebellious uprising led by the Earl of Essex. The uprising’s failure results in Essex’s execution on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I. It is a matter of fact that on the night before this historical event of 8 February 1601 a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II was given at The Globe theatre by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, for whom Shakespeare wrote. This was a change from the planned play – the actors were paid 40 shillings by the leading aristocratic supporters of Essex’s uprising. Significantly, it is a play about a weak king with no direct heir whose throne is usurped for the good of the country. In Elizabethan times, theatres provided one of the few places crowds could legally assemble in large numbers, and in a situation where they could be incited to mob action by rhetoric from the stage. Theatres could be dangerously political places.

It’s not surprising then that censorship of the stage became part of the government’s role. And it wasn’t just the potential for political incitement that caused concern, but increasingly anything that could corrupt public morals or offend individuals – especially the monarchy. By the early 1900s, censorship of British theatre routinely stopped any portrayal of living people or those whose immediate descendants were still living.

We are used now to seeing the present British royal family portrayed on film and stage – Helen Mirren has cornered today’s market for Queen Elizabeth II. Yet around the time the current Queen was crowned, the Lord Chamberlain was regularly banning the presentation of Queen Victoria on stage, while any inclusion of the reigning monarch in a drama was unthinkable. The Lord Chamberlain’s censorship continued right up to the abolition of his powers in 1968. One of the last plays to be banned from public performance featured Queen Victoria having a lesbian affair with Florence Nightingale. That play can now be performed legally of course, but it hasn’t yet been turned into an opera…

What are your favourite depictions of royalty on stage?

More about the presentation of monarchy in drama can be read in the article ‘We Three Queens’ in the programme that accompanies Gloriana.

Today marks 60 years since Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Following the death of King George VI, on 2 June 1953 the young princess was crowned in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey in front of more than 8,000 guests.

The Queen has been a regular visitor to the Royal Opera House over the years. She has attended numerous gala performances, and re-opened the Royal Opera House in 1999 following its three year closure for refurbishment.

Based on Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex, the opera depicts the public and private trials of Elizabeth I at the end of her reign. Find out more about the story in our political opera series.

To mark both the anniversary of the Queen's coronation and the centenary of Britten's birth, Richard Jones will direct a new production of the opera, bringing Gloriana to Covent Garden for the first time in six decades.

Renowned soprano Susan Bullock, who sang the role of Brünnhilde in The Ring Cycle earlier this season, will sing the role of Queen Elizabeth I.

‘I’m fascinated by the two conflicted sides of Elizabeth I,’ she said in an interview for Friends of Covent Garden Magazine. ‘There’s the private Elizabeth who wants to be in love like any woman, and there’s the official Queen, who feels she has to behave like a man to be taken seriously. I have to find the voice of Elizabeth I; I’ve got to find out who this woman is.’

Before Richard Jones’s new production of Benjamin Britten’s coronation operaGloriana opens in June, we asked Director of The Royal Opera Kasper Holten why the Company has chosen to stage this, one of the composer’s rarer works.

He’s equally excited about the rest of the cast and creative team, assembled for the work’s first staging at Covent Garden since its premiere in 1953: ‘We have a great cast led by Susan Bullock and Toby Spence, conducted by Paul Daniel. We’re bringing the full resources of the Royal Opera House to show what a masterpiece it really is.’

Gloriana is the story of Queen Elizabeth I’s love for the impulsive Earl of Essex. Set towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign it is less historical romance and more a meditation on what it means to be Queen. The opera was created to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. This new production, which is one of the highlights of the Britten centenary year, has been generously supported by the Britten Pears Foundation and has also received support from the Boltini Trust.